The latest rumors surrounding Apple's to-be-announced service are a mix of good and bad. Unfortunately, it's the latter that's allegedly keeping the service stalled at the moment, with Apple and music industry representatives still working out the contentious issue of licensing fees.

According to AppleInsider, Apple initially offered the record labels all of 6.5 cents for every 100 tracks streamed on Apple's service. The labels balked, as that figure is just a tad over half of what Pandora allegedly pays for the right to stream its songs. Apple eventually ended up boosting its offer to 12.5 cents per 100 songs  matching Pandora's alleged rate  which helped the company convince Universal Music to enter into a licensing agreement.

While that's a feather in Apple's cap, given that Universal Music is the world's largest record company, it still leaves Sony Music and Warner Music Group to convince. AppleInsider also reports that Apple's apparently close to getting Warner to get on board. However, Sony continues to balk at Apple's terms in the hopes that company will sweeten the deal.

If anything, the music labels see Apple as more of a cash cow than its peers. Since Apple stands to make a good amount of money from iRadio  or whatever the name ends up being  and Apple's sitting on quite a war chest of unused funds at the moment, to the tune of $147 billion or so, some industry executives believe that Apple can pony up even more in order to tap into the labels' valuable libraries.

This compensation could come in the form of increased payments for the tracks Apple streams or possibly a greater percentage of the advertising revenue that Apple seeks to gain from the service. Apple could also offer up a generic minimum payment for the rights to stream labels' music; it's unclear just what, if anything, Apple might do to convince Sony to join up.

Apple was alleged to have wanted to offer up its streaming service as part of last year's iPhone 5 launch. The complexities of the negotiations between Apple and the various labels might ultimately leave Apple in a disadvantageous position, should rivals Google or Amazon beat the company to the punch with new streaming services of their own.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
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